


Lipstick Surprise

by WordLady



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: F/M, Getting Together, Peggy Carter/Daniel Sousa - Freeform, on a mission
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-10-08 12:12:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17386241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WordLady/pseuds/WordLady
Summary: The moment they were sitting, she threw her arms around Daniel’s neck, and in less dangerous circumstances the utter astonishment on his face would have been comical.“If they come in,” she whispered in his ear, “we’ve got to sell it.”Peggy and Daniel and a trope.Takes places shortly after Season One, not Season Two compliant.





	Lipstick Surprise

                Peggy leaned into her vanity mirror, slowly and precisely applying a layer of scarlet to her lips.  Mr. Jarvis would be waiting with the car already, but this was hardly the night to be slapdash with her lipstick. In a moment, they would go pick up Daniel, and then they would be off to Augusta Dorteway’s annual birthday celebration, and Peggy’s first real fieldwork assignment since the end of the war.

                 Sending her and Daniel undercover to the party was Thompson’s idea. He’d pulled some strings to get them invitations, because all their intel pointed to Frank Dorteway’s ledger being in his library and no one could come up with a better way to get into the house, and because, Thompson said, no one was going to look at a gimp and a woman and think _agents_. It was probably true, Peggy had thought resentfully, but that didn’t make it any less irritating coming out of Thompson’s smug mouth.

                She was aware of a complicated knot in her stomach as she slipped the lipstick into her handbag and went out to find Mr. Jarvis and the car. There was excitement, because this is what she had been waiting for since coming to New York: fieldwork, and fieldwork that wasn’t just watching some half-deserted doorway all day long. There was tension, because Frank Dorteway was dangerous; people who crossed him had ended up dead before. And there was another kind of tension, too, because she was doing this with Daniel and in the few weeks since he’d invited her for that drink they hadn’t been quite at ease with each other. He had been a little reserved since that morning, clearly taking her demurral as a definite no, and she had been hesitating, unsure of what she wanted.

                 The evening began better than she had feared. Daniel was waiting at the agreed-upon corner, well turned out in a blue suit, and if they were both still a little guarded, they could at least discuss strategy and trade a joke or two at Thompson’s expense with relative ease.  The man at the door of the Dorteways’ sprawling house spared their invitations the briefest of glances before waving them in.  Once inside, it took scarcely forty-five minutes of small talk and mingling before they found a chance to slip away up the grand staircase and down a wide hall to the library.

                They’d been searching the library for perhaps fifteen minutes when Peggy heard voices in the hallway. She looked up from the desk drawer she was rifling; whoever was out there might not be headed for the library, but they couldn’t count on it.

                It was obvious that Daniel had heard them too, because he stepped back from his careful search of the map table, glanced tensely toward the library’s one door, then at the three tall second-floor windows across from it. Peggy could probably risk the jump and get out that way, but he couldn’t.

                She closed the drawer quickly but quietly and came around the desk. The voices were louder, and she recognized one of them as Dorteway.

                “You go,” Daniel whispered, nodding toward the already open window.

                “Absolutely not,” she said. Dorteway had killers on his payroll, and even if Daniel escaped alive it would blow the cover off their investigation. That also meant knocking Dorteway unconscious with the base of his marble reading lamp had to be absolutely their last resort.

                “I’m not getting out, and there’s no sense in both of us getting caught. Thompson might not think we look like agents, but why else would we be in here?”

                Peggy was making a quick survey of the room, all warm, golden light from the small lamps, books lined up on built-in shelves, and no cover. Even the big tufted leather sofa across from the fireplace was nothing they could hide behind.

                Daniel’s words and the warm intimacy of the room fit suddenly together in her mind like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Why else would they be in a room like this, indeed?

                “Come here,” she said, grabbing Daniel’s arm and pulling him toward the sofa. “I have an idea.”

                Caught off guard, he half-sat, half-fell into the couch beside her.

                The voices, Dorteway and another man, were even with the door now.

                The moment they were sitting, she threw her arms around Daniel’s neck, and in less dangerous circumstances the utter astonishment on his face would have been comical.

                “If they come in,” she whispered in his ear, “we’ve got to sell it.”

                “Right,” he said, nodding.

                The next moment, the doorknob turned and Daniel slid his arm around her waist, pulled her abruptly against him, and kissed her.

                Peggy’s plan, as much as she had a plan beyond the essential idea, was for nothing more than a close embrace and a guilty start, maybe a quick hand through Daniel’s hair to make it properly disheveled. 

                But now she was pinned against him, breasts and all, his arm around her stronger than she somehow expected. His lips were pressed against hers, a little too hard, maybe, and not moving, but soft and warm, and _there_. And the next moment she was pressing unthinkingly in to return the kiss, a sudden tension in her belly that had nothing to do with Dorteway’s voice on the other side of the door.

                She ran her hand through his hair, and even though it was a calculated move, even with the door sighing open behind her, she was acutely aware of the warm strands of Daniel’s hair sliding against her fingers. She felt as much as heard his breath catch. 

                “What the hell?” Dorteway said, now far enough into the room to see them.

                Peggy sprang away from Daniel and scrambled to her feet, shame-faced and flustered for Dorteway’s benefit.

                 “Oh,” she said, tucking at her hair, feigning embarrassment and confusion. “We were . . . We were just . . .”

                “I’m sorry, sir,” Daniel had gathered his crutch and was getting to his feet. “We didn’t mean to trespass.” He sounded collected enough, but she was pleased to see that his mouth was smudged with lipstick and his hair was hanging tousled on his forehead. He looked the part.

                “This is my private study,” Dorteway said with disgust, sweeping his arm toward the still-open door. “Go have your petting party somewhere else.”

                The other man was laughing to himself, shooting Daniel a conspiratorial look over Dorteway’s shoulder. “You might try the gazebo,” he said, looking Peggy up and down. “It’s not cold, and anyway she looks like the kind of gal who’d keep a fellow warm.”

                Peggy swallowed the urge to deck him. 

                 “Thanks for the tip,” Daniel said, in a way that reminded her of Ray Krzeminski, and the next moment they were in the hallway, with the door closed behind them.

                Daniel let out a breath, and Peggy felt herself relax. It had worked. They were safe. Their cover was still intact, the investigation still a secret.

                They didn’t speak as they walked down the hall toward the staircase, and Peggy was glad for the silence. It gave her a moment to breathe and to fix her thoughts on the business at hand: rejoining the party and how they might salvage the evening, now that they couldn’t search the library.

                They stopped just shy of the top of the stairs, as if by unspoken agreement. The clamor of the party drifted up from below, but they were still out of sight.

                “Well,” Daniel said, “I guess we sold it.”

                “Indeed.”

                 She turned toward him, intending to say more, and noticed again his ruffled hair and her lipstick on his mouth.  All the sensations that could only claim a fraction of her attention while they were still in danger flooded vividly back: her hand in his hair, the grip of his arm, her thigh and her breasts against his leg and his chest, the firm press and then soft movement of his lips. . .

                Peggy caught herself staring.

                “Right,” she said briskly, bending her head determinedly over her handbag and rummaging in it for her compact and her handkerchief. “We’d better make ourselves presentable before we go back down.”

                “Yeah, you’re all . . .” He made a smearing motion.

                “So are you,” she said tartly, snapping open her compact and holding it up so he could see the scarlet smudges around his lips.

                “Oh.” He reddened a little and fished in his pockets for his handkerchief.

                Peggy examined her mouth in the small mirror, carefully wiping away the smeared lipstick.

                When she looked up, Daniel had wiped his mouth and was putting his handkerchief away, but without the benefit of a mirror, he hadn’t got all of it off.

                “You missed a bit,” she said, and reached up with her own handkerchief to rub at the stain at the corner of his mouth. She knew it was an excuse to touch him, that an hour ago she would have pointed, or held up the mirror. But she liked the feeling of his shoulder under her other hand, the nearness of him, the whisper of his breath on her wrist.

                The stain was gone in a moment, and Peggy was both reluctant to pull away and glad to busy herself reapplying her lipstick in the compact’s mirror. This was new.  And yet not entirely new. She had noticed Daniel differently since his invitation those few weeks ago, had found her attention wandering sometimes to the back of his neck and the set of his shoulders as he bent over his work, to his forearms when he rolled up his sleeves on hot afternoons. And she missed the warm camaraderie they’d shared.  

                She was still unsure of whether she was ready to let someone else into her heart, of how much of the decision she was about to make was the heat in her blood, but she knew she liked Daniel, she was attracted to Daniel, and she would regret not giving them a chance.

                She clicked the compact shut and looked up. Daniel had smoothed back his hair as best he could, though it wouldn’t really be neat again without a comb, and was re-settling his jacket.

                 “I don’t have plans tomorrow night,” she said.

                “You gonna try and sneak back . . .” He looked up and met her eyes, and trailed off.

                “No, but I’d like to get a drink, if you’d like to join me.” She was smiling at him and he returned it, broadly, joyfully.

                “You know I would,” he said, and reached for her hand.                                                      

                And then, because she wanted to, because she wanted him, because he was smiling besottedly into her eyes, because if the war had taught her anything, it was that you only ever really had the moment you were in, she threw her arms around his neck for the second time that night and kissed him.

                Daniel wasted no more than a split second on surprise before he wrapped his free arm around her and kissed her back. This one was different from the one before, softer and deeper, with feeling and not for show. Peggy leaned into him, warm with a sense of opening possibility. Maybe, after everything, she could have this in her life, too.

                She pulled back after a moment but let her hands rest on Daniel’s shoulders. She was a little breathless, and rather gratified to see that he was, too. He loosened his hold on her but didn’t let her go completely.

                “We still have work to do,” she said, half regretfully.

                “Yes, ma’am,” he all but whispered, even more regretfully. Then he leaned in to give her a single kiss, quick, but not light, and let her go.

                They stepped back from each other, a slow drawing apart. Peggy fished out her handkerchief and compact and went about repairing the damage to her lipstick for the second time that evening. She was returning her attention to the work at hand, but the feeling of openness and possibility stayed with her.  Right now, they had to go downstairs and find out who among Dorteway’s associates had loose lips. Tomorrow night, there would be time for this again.   

                When they were presentable, Daniel fell into step beside her, and they went down to the party side by side.


End file.
